The mag­is­trate ex­pressed con­cern that the girl had di­rected one of the ac­cused per­sons to a lodge where she pre­vi­ously had sex with an­other man.

“I have dealt with this child in two dif­fer­ent cases be­fore. I can­not pre­side over this mat­ter. Can I please re­fer this case to an­other court? How­ever, I think the par­ents also have a case to an­swer here. Guardians should keep a tight leash and close eye on their chil­dren,” said Mr Ndhlovu.

“If you keep on sleep­ing around with these older men, even with your con­sent, we will ar­rest them but you will be sus­cep­ti­ble to so many sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases and at worst, HIV. Sup­pose you fell preg­nant, you will not even know who the fa­ther of the child is.”

The mag­is­trate con­tin­ued: “In the last case, you ac­tu­ally ad­mit­ted to have led your 36-year-old boyfriend, who can ac­tu­ally fa­ther you, to a lodge where you had pre­vi­ously gone with an­other man. So much ex­pe­ri­ence for such a young girl. I think so­cial work­ers need to be en­gaged so that you can get some coun­selling or as­sis­tance to get you think­ing straight”.

Mr Ndhlovu lashed out at Siz­iba for hav­ing sex with the mi­nor say­ing chil­dren are meant to be pro­tected not ex­ploited.

“It is a crime to have a sex­ual re­la­tion­ship with a mi­nor who has not reached the le­gal age to con­sent to sex,” he said.

The mag­is­trate said he could not deal with the case and mag­is­trate Ms Tancy Dube ended up pre­sid­ing over it.

Be­fore Ms Dube, pros­e­cu­tor, Mr Ken­neth Shava said Siz­iba and the com­plainant fell in love some­time in July this year and had a sex­ual re­la­tion­ship.

“On an un­known date in July this year, the ac­cused per­son in­vited the com­plainant to his res­i­dence. He dragged the com­plainant into his room and locked the door. He started ca­ress­ing her and they ended up in­dulging in sex­ual in­ter­course. The com­plainant con­sented to in­dulge,” said Mr Shava.

He said the mat­ter came to light when the mi­nor was caught by her teacher watch­ing porno­graphic videos on her phone at school.

A po­lice re­port was made lead­ing to Siz­iba’s ar­rest.

Ap­pear­ing be­fore Ms Dube, pleaded guilty to the crime.

She sen­tenced him to 12 months in prison but sus­pended six months of the sen­tence on con­di­tion of good be­hav­iour for the next five years. The other six months were sus­pended on con­di­tion that he per­forms 210 hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice at En­tum­bane Po­lice Sta­tion.

On Oc­to­ber 10, a 36-year-old man from En­tum­bane sub­urb was also sen­tenced to com­mu­nity ser­vice for hav­ing sex­ual in­ter­course with the ju­ve­nile. Last month, a 29-year-old man also from the same neigh­bour­hood was or­dered to per­form 205 hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice for sleep­ing with the mi­nor.